New Year = New Multichannel Marketing Plan

marketing


Use Marketing Plan to Reach Your Business Objectives

As we approach the start of a new year, it is a good time to evaluate your business and marketing plans. Online advertising and marketing continues to evolve and offline channels are changing as well. Many clients and colleagues are curious about what role social media should play in their marketing efforts. Given that we all have limits on our time and resources, deciding among all the available marketing channels can be a challenge. You can start by defining your marketing objectives and clarifying what the most important goals are for your business in the coming year. Here are several core questions to ask when doing a marketing review:
  • what are my major business objective(s) for 2011?
  • how is my brand doing in today's economy? 
  • what changes in the marketplace are affecting my product/service? 
  • is my current audience the same?
  • are there new audiences for my product/service?
  • what message will ring true and show the benefits of my product/service?
  • what media channels will best reach my audience?

Make Your Marketing Plan Multichannel

Developing your plan will include defining your objectives, analyzing the marketplace, finding an audience, creating a strategy and effectively implementing that strategy. Using every available marketing channel will help you reach your current clients and target audience. Take the time to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each channel. Take advantage of every channel opportunity and be sure to have a presence in all the channels that your customers use.

Use Push and Pull Marketing Activities

When developing your strategy include both push and pull marketing activities. Push marketing refers to pushing your message out to your target audience. You take an action that puts your message in front of them, for example you send a postcard, run a radio ad, or send out a broadcast email. Pull marketing activities are used to draw your target audience into your major marketing channels so you can have a larger dialogue with them. For example, a banner ad to draw people to your website or a magazine ad to bring people to your store.

Allocate Your Resources

With a plan in place you can allocate your resources to the projects of greatest priority. Having determined and visualized the end result, you can plan the steps needed to get there. Each marketing decision can be made within the framework of “does this marketing activity bring us closer to our business goal?"

I encourage you to start on your marketing plan today. It doesn't need to be a fancy document but it does require serious thought and evaluation. Take the time to gain clarity and purpose for the year ahead.

Join us at our next Coffee Hour to continue this discussion:
Is your marketing ready for a new year?
December 15, 2010 | 8:30 - 10:00am | Stevens 470
register today >

Go back